


Our man in Havana

by twoofdiamonds



Category: Original Work
Genre: Dystopia, Multi, Religion, Sexuality, Short Story, Teenagers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-12
Updated: 2015-03-12
Packaged: 2018-03-17 13:04:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,311
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3530417
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/twoofdiamonds/pseuds/twoofdiamonds





	Our man in Havana

The window creaks, announcing Ollie's arrival. He climbs through quickly, not needing to see in order to place his feet. Long practice has made him agile like a cat burglar. This is his place, _their_ place, and he knows every patch of loose plaster and every missing floorboard. Two summers ago Toby had dared him, and so Ollie had climbed in and staked their claim. Two years and forever ago.

 

Jo and Seb are in their corner, illuminated by battery lanterns. They have been making out and Seb is still nosing at Jo's ear through mousy blonde hair. Ollie has interrupted them and Jo's face is pink and apologetic. She tries to squirm out of his arms but Seb makes a small noise of protest and tugs her back in. Seb may have no qualms about making out in front of Ollie but Jo's a nice girl and she bats him away.

 

Seb sighs but relents and they compromise: he keeps Jo tucked in tight against his bulk but otherwise lets her be. He smiles ruefully at Ollie and shoots him a bro nod. “S'up?” he offers, like it's any other night. Like it's not Ollie's last night forever and ever, Amen.

 

“A'right,” Ollie nods back, and his voice may not be as deep as Seb's but it's every bit as chilled and he's a little amazed at himself.

 

Jo and Seb are surrounded by an impressive stash of beer – the good stuff, menthol cigarettes and blue label vodka, and Ollie whistles low in appreciation. Seb looks old enough to get served by Mr Simmons who runs the liquor store in the quiet afternoons but their funds can usually only stretch to cheap cider and foul Arabic tobacco. This extravagance has been laid on because tonight is Ollie's send-off. A lump forms thick in his throat and he tries to swallow it down with a mouthful of beer. It's very nearly ice cold.

 

Toby's donkey-laugh announces the arrival of Ollie's remaining two friends long before they get to the window. Ollie sips his beer and shares a grin with Jo. Nobody would ever compare Toby to a cat burglar. He's heavy footed and always tripping over nothing. Sure enough, Toby starts to clamber down from the window but drops the last few feet, falling heavily in an inelegant sprawl. He snorts, picking himself up and makes a show of brushing himself off before bowing deeply to his audience and flourishing an imaginary hat.

 

“Doofus,” Seb says but he's smiling. Ollie's going to miss these guys so badly when he's gone. Tomorrow. Tomorrow Ollie will be gone.

 

“Are you okay?” Ella asks Toby, her own landing infinitely more delicate, but even Ella, the pseudo mother of their little group, can't hide her smirk at Toby's involuntary slapstick.

 

“Yeah yeah,” Toby says, faking irritation, “Laugh it up.”

 

Ollie watches his friends and tries to commit every detail to memory. Toby goes straight for the beer and Ella asks Seb about school things: they're in the same English group. Ollie wants to record them or stop time. He wants to stay here forever in their homespun Temple to Friendship. He's acutely aware that he has been living in a temporary haven from the real world, has acknowledged it everyday now for a long time, thanking the Temple Gods repeatedly for blessing him with such awesome friends and doing his very best never to take them for granted. It has been a golden era in Ollie's life and its ending weighs heavily in his stomach. Some part of him also acknowledges that it is an end to childhood, but this is not yet a clear thought and won't be for many years to come.

 

They're all here, the 'Fucked up Five', as Seb sometimes says. Unless you count Sol, and nobody really does. Sol's an okay guy to hang out with but he usually has better things to do. Tonight it's some kind of sport. He seems to play them all.

 

“And then there were five,” Ollie says softly. Jo looks up, although he hadn't meant for her to hear him, and she has an unbearably broken look on her face for a moment. Ollie tries to smile at her but it won't come. He feels helpless.

 

“Bullshit or Skin?” Seb asks, rapid-fire dealing the cards and pausing over his own ace.

 

 _Bullshit,_ Ollie thinks but Toby says, “Skin,” and so they start off that way.

 

Toby and Jo haven't brought much to bet with, preferring to swig from the vodka bottle when they lose. Ollie's pockets are crammed with knickknacks however, all the little souvenirs of his life that he would have had to leave behind anyway, from memory cards to tiny pottery animals. His friends accept the bounty solemnly.

 

They play for hours and the time passes just like it always does, no matter how hard Ollie wishes it wouldn't. He doesn't drink much more, only two bottles of beer, and he doesn't touch the vodka.

 

They get bored with Skin and move on to Bullshit. Finally they play three draw poker. Ollie wins a hand and Seb unties the star-studded leather thong from around his wrist and launches it at Ollie's forehead where it strikes dead centre with a perfect _thwap_. Ollie fastens it around his own wrist and feels Seb's heat bleed into his skin as the others look on. His mother will make him take it off when she sees it.

 

The mood of the group has shifts and there will be no more card games tonight. The vodka bottle has been emptied, mostly by Toby and Jo, and the big uneasy elephant in the room is about to make itself known.

  
It has a sad story, the big sad elephant in the room. It begins sometime in the previous century when Ollie's great-grandmother had birthed a son more stubborn than a mule, and ends with a family that refuses to renounce their religion in a world where religion has been outlawed. His grandfather's dogma spread via Ollie's mother and infected the whole family. They cling to their religion as though it were a life-raft, when really it's a rusty anchor and they're all going down with it. Ollie's family are proud to declare themselves Demesnians. They refused to hide, when so many others lied to be allowed to stay in their homes.

 

“We leave in the morning,” Ollie says, answering the silence. His friends look alternately frightened and sympathetic. They all look helpless and Ollie knows that emotion well.

 

He doesn't want to go. He wants to scream to the Temple Gods and renounce them for being outrageously unfair. Better to keep his friends and live in the comfort of the Federation than to lose everything to some outdated traditions and unlikely Gods. It was never Ollie's decision though, and after the new legislation was passed everything had happened bewilderingly fast.

 

Ollie worries for his grandma who is too frail to be moving so far. He's supposed to be at home helping, not out playing drinking games with friends. His grandpa tells him that fifteen is too young an age to be even halfway objective but Ollie knows in his heart that these kids: Jo with her neon leggings, Seb with his bad-boy attitude, Ella with her dangly hair and dangly earrings, and Toby with his immaculate jeans, are the best friends that he will ever have.

 

“Run away,” says Ella, earnest and fierce, “We can hide you. They'd never find you before tomorrow-”

 

 _And they'd have to go without me_ , Ollie thinks. It's what they're all thinking but won't say. His family aren't moving voluntarily, they're being deported.

 

For a crazy moment he thinks he'll do it: run away and keep on running. Maybe find a job and a fake ID. He could live out his whole life in Federate luxury and keep his friends.

 

He can't of course. The Federation has spoken and the doors have firmly closed to Ollie and his kind. Ollie can't be the only Demesnian on his own. He can't bring himself to deny his family and his heritage any more than his grandfather can, and even if he could, he's scared and his family need him.

 

He gives Ella a lopsided smile. It's the most he can manage. “I can't,” he says. There's miserable silence.

 

“Ollie's gonna be badass,” Seb says, and Ollie loves him a little for trying so hard to lighten the mood again. “S'right isn' it Ollie? Gonna be the leader of the Rebels some day. Our man in Havana.”

 

“Yeah,” Ollie begins, more than willing to play along but then Toby is up on his feet, swaying like a tree in a storm, his face all twisted up and ugly with anger.

 

“It's not fuckin' funny man!” Toby snarls at Seb and launches himself at the bigger boy.

 

Seb dodges him easily, rolling to the side, but Toby's one hundred percent serious and he pulls back his fist. It's ridiculous, a parody of a streetfighting and nothing they usually do together, even when they're stupid-drunk. Toby pauses there, elbow raised and the colour drains from his face. He stumbles away and runs to the kitchen area. There's a pause, as there must be for perfect comedic timing, and then the sound of retching and vomit splashing the tiled floor.

 

“Gross!” Ella yells after him. “You better clean that up yourself.”

 

Seb rolls his eyes, exasperated by Toby, even as he gets up and follows the continuing sound of vomiting into the kitchen. He glances back and sends Ollie a look that speaks volumes about his opinions of lightweight douches who drink all the vodka. It's a private joke and it's their last.

 

Suddenly Ollie wants to leave. Soon it will be midnight and he needs to be at home with his family, sleeping in his own bed one last time.   
  


He scrambles up, and starts to climb.

 

“Ollie!” It's Jo. Her voice is so sad, more of a sob than anything. He doesn't look back, can't say goodbye. His feet hit crumbling tarmac and he starts to run. Someone runs after him. For a terrified moment he thinks it's Seb and panic seizes in his throat. There's no way he can say goodbye to Seb. Even the most badass rebel would break down and cry like a baby if they were ever forced to say goodbye to Seb.

 

The footfalls are light though, too light for Seb, and Jo and Toby are in no state to climb or run so it must be Ella, always the responsible one. Ollie slows to a walk and lets her catch up.

 

They walk to his house in silence. The seven minutes it takes feel more like an hour.

 

When they finally get to the door Ollie still can't think of anything to say. Ella says, “So...” and Ollie knows exactly what she will say next: _I guess this is goodbye._

 

He's not ready for goodbye yet, so he kisses her. He kisses her to keep her with him for a little bit longer, his very last friend.

 

Ella makes a startled  _mmph_ of surprise but wraps her arms around his neck and kisses back. She tastes so good: beer, cigarettes and spearmint gum. The kiss is somehow clean, despite their open mouths and sliding tongues. It's not good in the way that kissing Seb would have been but it's nice all the same. Ella is warm and safe and kissing a pretty girl like this is permissible. She lets Ollie take what he needs from her mouth and the kiss turns hungry, fuelled by his desperation and loss. 

 

One day Ollie will need a wife to make a family of his own. There's no room for his brand of deviance in the servitude of the Temple Gods. It's one of the arguments that the Federation has used against his people: that they are intolerant and wilfully blind. Ollie lets himself think about Seb, about how kissing Seb, being _allowed_ to kiss Seb, would be so very different, and how it can never ever happen, not for Ollie. He thinks fiercely that the Federation are right and he tries hard to ignore the guilt that immediately sets in, and the part of his mind that screams _traitor_.

 

Ollie has been rejected from the entire civilized world. He hates them all: his teachers, the politicians, the Transition Police, every adult who calls themselves a Federate and every Demesnian dumb enough to openly worship the Temple Gods. Ollie hates the stupid Temple Gods most of all.

 

When the tears come he has to stop kissing Ella but she holds him and he sobs wetly into her neck. They sit on his front steps and Ollie's heart must have finally broken in two because he just can't stop. Ella presses his head against her big soft breasts and he clutches at her, wanting to hide there while the world ends around them and stay there until it's all over.

 

Eventually Ollie's mother opens the door a crack and hisses, “Get lost,” at Ella. Her voice is cold and angry and Ollie hates his mother too. She's proud and petty, embarrassed by Ollie's teenaged emotional tantrum and worried about what their neighbours might think, and that's really stupid because their neighbours are people they're never going to see again. She shouldn't be angry with Ella because it's not Ella's fault. Ella is fifteen too and she didn't make the rules.

 

Ollie's vision is so blurred he can barely see the ground. “Sorry,” he mumbles and hopes that Ella caught it. He pushes past his mother, past the waiting suitcases and into the sleeping house.

 

At the top of the stairs he hears the front door snick shut and it sounds like the quietest firing squad.


End file.
